Tales from Beta Kindergarten I: Implantation
by Ajora
Summary: The third planet from a yellow star in the Crystal system was perfect for a new Gem colony, and Peridot Facet-1F2 Cut-2AA was just the right gem to begin developing its Kindergartens. Earth has a way of challenging Homeworld's status quo, and Peridot finds herself in deeper trouble than she ever expected. One wrong step and all of the history that should have been changes.
1. High Hopes

Alternatively: AU where the war ends earlier and the Beta Kindergarten gems survive.

* * *

It doesn't take much to alter history. A pile of pebbles built up over the course of years can divert a stream as surely as a boulder hurled in a fit of volcanic explosion. One decision can change everything.

While it was generally unlikely that the lower echelons of Homeworld society might acquire their own pearls, it wasn't completely unheard of. The suggestion that one might acquire a pearl through exceptional service to the Diamond Authority was a driving motivation for many, from the lowest ruby soldiers to ambitious quartzes. That the pearls gifted to such gems were often second-hand was beside the point.

Peridot Facet-1F Cut-2AA was well aware of her good fortune of having acquired her pearl that way. She had overseen the installation of over five hundred Kindergartens spread out over Blue Diamond's later colonies, all as perfect and productive as gemetically possible. For her service and obedience she was rewarded her own quarters and a pearl that had once belonged to a grandidierite (and a pink zircon before that, and originally belonged to a trapiche emerald). While the string of previous owners had initially been off-putting, Peridot found that the pearl lived entirely up to expectation. It was pretty, quiet, and did exactly what it was told. Sometimes it even acted on its own in anticipation of Peridot's needs, which she appreciated. She had certainly never considered purchasing a pearl before she was gifted with one, but she better understood the appeal by then.

She didn't really _do_ a lot with her pearl, not the things she had heard that other owners did, but that didn't seem to matter so much. Peridot took the pearl with her on each assignment, and with each assignment she relied more and more on its presence. She could call for any number of tools and the pearl would be at her elbow in a second with what she needed. When she needed to vent, the pearl was there to listen sympathetically and nod in agreement every time Peridot needed vindication. When she was stressed, the pearl hummed soothingly as it massaged the space around the gem at the nape of her neck. Any misgivings she had about the pearl's history of ownership disappeared by the time the first colony was selected for Pink Diamond.

Blue Diamond recommended Peridot's services to Pink Diamond for her first colony, which was the highest honor Peridot had ever been given by the Diamond she was made for. She was summarily given command of the propagation and Kindergarten development side of colonization and worked alongside an emerald who handled higher-grade personnel management. They made for an efficient team. Peridot began the Prime Kindergarten in short order.

The Prime Kindergarten was established in a chasm carved into folded belts of crystalline metamorphic and igneous rocks, belts which were extraordinarily high in the fine quality silicates needed for quartz production. Their ages, ranging from over a billion years to over three hundred million years, were ideal. Everything else that was worthless had already eroded away, leaving her with grounds ripe for a Kindergarten. Still, she petitioned to Pink Diamond for additional crew to even out the chasm's walls and received them, and set them to work in short order. Not a shipment went awry or a task went off schedule. Only when the excavation of the Kindergarten walls was finished and the first batch of gems was incubating did Peridot allow herself to rest and enjoy the company of her pearl. She only extricated herself long enough to do status checks, double-check the programming for the injectors, and ensure that the injection materials were properly formulated. Occasionally she deigned to report to Emerald.

Naturally, because the universe loves chaos, a group of unproductive malcontents then made themselves a problem.

It began barely a couple of hundred solar years after she put the first batch of Kindergarten gems in the ground, set up the underground command post, established the temporary camp for the anorthite crews that handled manual labor, and sent the early-emerging rose quartzes to training. The radiation from incubating gems was doing a glorious job of deforestation in and around the Kindergarten, and all the anorthite crews needed to do was clear out the dead organics and soon enough the chasm and nearby areas were barren. She'd paid attention to the construction reports from various bismuth teams to the Diamonds, but that was a matter of minor professional interest.

What piqued her curiosity was the first major report of sabotage at one of the spires under construction; supposedly a bismuth had joined the growing band of useless rabble-rousers and destroyed her own work. Peridot had snorted in disgust at the absurdity of ruining one's own hard work and returned to analyzing her readouts, and her pearl was ever at her side in case she ever needed anything. When she found the time to dwell on current events, she had questioned loudly about what the malcontents could possibly be thinking, exploded in indignation over the loss of labor hours and materials, vented over the irrationality of anyone who would dare question the way things have always been, and her pearl nodded along with her.

Then, sometime during the progression of colonization, something peculiar happened. As Pink Diamond was still a _new_ Diamond and this was her first colony, Peridot expected that she would have a more hands-on role in the colonization efforts. She hadn't expected to have her reports redirected to Blue Diamond, or to be summoned to report to her Diamond in person.

Peridot arrived at the Sea Shrine with her pearl shadowing her footsteps, her curiosity piqued perhaps beyond what would have been proper. When she stepped off the warp pad, she was acutely aware of the amethyst guards and their commanding agate surrounding the warp pad within easy striking distance.

There was something off about the guards. Like she was under suspicion. Yet, when she paused to follow the line of their stares, it wasn't her they were watching. They eyed her pearl with nothing but distrust, which almost seemed to weigh on its slight shoulders. Her pearl's short green hair hung almost defensively over its down-turned face as it hugged Peridot's tablet close. As if that would protect it should one of the guards attack it. Only belatedly did Peridot realize that there had been mention of a pearl among the malcontents. It never seemed worth noticing.

Still, if there was something her age and rank allowed her, it was the capacity to challenge larger gems than her. She turned towards the agate and, in as loud a voice as she could muster shy of a scream, said, "If my pearl is guilty of anything, _tell me_ and I'll discipline it myself. Otherwise, _stop staring!_ " Agate grunted and sneered, but the slightest nod from her had the entire contingent looking away just long enough for Peridot to grab her pearl's wrist and drag it with her along the corridor towards Blue Diamond's palanquin.

Peridot supposed the view from the sea floor could be impressive, but her Diamond commanded her attention first and foremost. Blue Diamond waited, seated in her throne in the palanquin, with her pearl ever a silent presence at her side. Peridot saluted and her pearl bowed low behind her. "My Diamond, Peridot Facet-1F Cut-2AA here to report on the progress of the Prime Kindergarten in Facet—"

Blue Diamond did not bother to pull back the hood from her face, or even make a motion of acknowledgement. Words were all she ever needed. "I've read your reports. Your work is, as always, exemplary."

Warm pleasure seemed to flush from Peridot's gem to her extremities at the praise, and she chuckled self-consciously. "My Diamond is too generous."

"I did not call you here for another report." The hood moved just enough for the icy gaze of one cold eye to fall on the pearl behind Peridot. To its credit, her pearl didn't flinch this time. "Can you trust it?"

"Your gift is the most precious thing to me, my Diamond. My pearl never leaves my side," Peridot stated. It wasn't entirely true, and she did entrust her pearl with minor duties that required them to be apart, but it was hardly worth questioning when her pearl always returned on time and with every errand completed. Still… "The few times it does, it is carefully monitored. My pearl is not so undisciplined as to turn rebellious, I can assure you. I have been a good mistress to it and it wants for nothing."

Blue Diamond did not look entirely satisfied, but she pressed on. "I trust you've been watching the news feeds."

"When I get the opportunity, my Diamond. Are you concerned about this band of malcontents?" It was hardly the first attempt at rebellion, and it wouldn't be the last. Blue Diamond had, after all, quashed several over the millennia. Still, as this was Pink Diamond's first colony, she supposed Blue Diamond might have been concerned for the youngest Diamond.

"Some events went unreported to keep things on schedule." Blue Diamond hands settled back on the armrests, and she looked to be deciding just how much to tell her. "They are simply sabotaging new construction projects and destroying the guards' forms so far, but we both know how these things run. A member of my court has already been lost in the effort to settle things peacefully with them." Peridot's breath caught in surprise; that hadn't been in any of the news reports. If her Diamond noticed, she didn't address the interruption. "You will begin another Kindergarten. Just in case."

Peridot mentally ran the figures and tried not to panic. The injection mixtures were already formulated to take absolute advantage of the geological pressure and chemical makeup of the silicate belts in the first Kindergarten. She would have to scramble to properly survey the next site and figure out the right formulas for that particular setting and order new supplies. With a rebellion going on, the supply lines would surely be targeted, which meant that she would have to figure out how to spread out what materials she did have and hope for the rest. She took in a breath to steady herself. "Do you have a site in mind, my Diamond?"

"No. You operate well under unusual circumstances. Find somewhere suitable and secret enough to go unnoticed. The Beta site does not need to be perfect. So long as there are bodies available to fight, how closely they adhere to your standards is irrelevant. Do what you can with what materials we can spare." Blue Diamond paused to pull the hood back over her eyes. "Official channels will not be secure. Instead of filing your supply requisition forms through those channels, send them to Morganite Facet-1C Cut-8BA. She will coordinate with you to deliver your supplies directly."

"Yes, my Diamond," Peridot replied without missing a beat, though her misgivings over this entire proposal were growing with each second. There were so many things that could go wrong.

The earliest attempt at rebellion in her lifetime occurred when she was only a few thousand years out of the ground, and it had taken hold in one of White Diamond's colonies. The rebels had cut off the Kindergartens to cripple Homeworld's ability to use brute force against them. They had more Kindergartens to go against and a traitor in their midst, and ultimately they lost and were shattered for their troubles. Her perfect Kindergarten could become a target, and she would need another to offset any damage to its productivity. "Your wisdom is as flawless as you are."

There was no indication that Blue Diamond heard the praise. Not that there ever was. "A personal meeting has been arranged for you and Morganite. My pearl will give you her contact information, along with some files that may be of some use to you. Thank you for your service, Peridot."

Recognizing the dismissal for what it was, Peridot tamped down the wellspring of new questions and saluted. She would figure out what to do with all her questions in time.

* * *

Notes: This fic would not exist without the theories bouncing around tumblr, especially jaspurr and every theorist on the #jasper or #su jasper tag. Y'all are great and I appreciate reading you even though I don't comment. What I do own? The plot, the OCs, the fact that Peridot's job is a lot like several aspects of mine, my aborted stint in geology as a college major (I graduated with geography and archaeology instead), and any and all research related to the pre-Columbian American Southwest (which itself owes everything to what First Nations people are willing to share). Some of the archaeological sites I've been to will appear in later parts, and I may even throw in travel photos for illustration.

This is a 5-part series, and Implantation has five chapters planned. The number of chapters in the other parts will vary.


	2. Stairway to Heaven

To say that Peridot was uncomfortable with the likely path before her was an understatement. Under no circumstances had she ever considered skirting official avenues of acquisition, and Blue Diamond's order to do so was far from reassuring. The official requisition documents and the shipments that followed had always been perfectly adequate, even during the last rebellion. Given that this rebellion was unsettling enough to at least raise some concerns for a Diamond, Peridot suspected that there was something different about this one. Figuring it out, though, was better suited for a time when she wasn't expected to kowtow to a rare gem as infamous as Morganite.

She almost didn't remember Morganite. Not at first. Peridot was still a lowly technician just six thousand years out of the ground when rebellion erupted on White Diamond's fifth colony. While she was never privy to all of the details, she did eventually remember that Morganite had infiltrated the rebellion and sabotaged it so thoroughly that there had been no other attempts for at least twenty thousand years. During the second rebellion to happen in Peridot's lifetime, the Diamonds-controlled news agencies had reassured Homeworld that the rebellion was a minor affair staged by gems who were unhappy with how they were made, and they eventually saw the light and returned to the good graces of the wise and forgiving Diamonds. They said that Morganite had been instrumental in opening up a dialogue between the Diamonds and the rebels. But Peridot, having been conscripted to work on the Kindergartens in a nearby colony at the time, heard rumors that never made it to the telecasts. Somehow or another, Morganite managed to infiltrate that rebellion too, and it collapsed just as the other had. None of those involved with that uprising were seen again. Two instances of that Morganite being near a rebellion was a coincidence. That Peridot then remembered her name mentioned during two other would-be uprisings made her suspect that Morganite was an agent of chaos for the Diamonds. Why that made her uneasy, she didn't quite know. Perhaps it was because morganites of that particular clarity were rare and tended to remain in their spires or act as facilitators; that the Diamonds had allowed this morganite to work far below her station struck her as terribly unnatural.

Nevertheless, Peridot adhered to Blue Diamond's orders and waited at the field within hiking distance of the Sky Spire's warp pad, and she busied herself with writing up her basic needs for the new Kindergarten to hand over to Morganite upon her arrival. The sharp, glacier-carved metamorphic mountains were very impressive, of course. The mists formed by the clash of warm ocean currents with cold glacier air made the peaks look like the humps of those ancient, long-extinct beasts that used to dwell on Blue Diamond's fourth colony before it was fully transformed into a proper Gem-controlled world. The trees were tall and the breeze wafted their fragrance right into her face at times. She would have to commend the bismuth in charge of development for her aesthetic tastes.

Her pearl glanced around furtively while they waited, as if it—

Peridot stopped that thought in its tracks. Thinking of a pearl as a gem that could _want_ anything was ridiculous, and any thoughts she might have towards regarding the pearl as something that could appreciate its surroundings or want to go exploring was simply the product of an overactive imagination. They weren't made for that kind of thing; layers of nacre did not have the atomic stability or structural integrity to allow for proper gem programming and personal development. It was a miracle that pearls could learn beyond the core programming at their seeds at all.

Before she could go further on her thoughts, a small spacecraft began drawing close enough for Peridot to identify. It was an older ship, as they went; it was roughly fifty thousand years old and scored with millennia of inner system travel. In an act of complete blasphemy, the mark of the Diamond Authority was nearly scratched and burned away, and just looking at it made Peridot uncomfortable enough to want to take its occupant to task for her negligence and to fix it before anyone else noticed it. Blasphemy often got gems interrogated and shattered if they weren't careful. Given its age, Peridot doubted it utilized space-expanding technology that was on all the new vessels, so it was surely as cramped inside as it looked outside. But it landed perfectly, its gangplank extended and settled against the earth as smoothly as any on a newer model of ship, and the glimpses she managed to get of the interior revealed a marked improvement in the ship's condition. The battered exterior must have been intentional, perhaps meant to keep others from suspecting anything about the owner's status.

The owner herself appeared, her form as brilliant and polished as the pale pink gem set in her midriff, and her matching pearl shadowed her footsteps. While her long dress and the cut of her fringe would have fit perfectly well in Blue Diamond's court, this Morganite was as much a free agent as Peridot. They had both served each Diamond in their own way over the years. Peridot saluted first, as would be expected for someone of her rank. The tinkling laugh that followed was unexpected, and Morganite waved away the gesture with a smirk. "Peridot 1F-2AA, right? There's no need for that."

Peridot forced her hands back at her side and swallowed down the rising indignation over someone of Morganite's clarity stepping outside of acceptable behavioral parameters. It wasn't _right_ for someone of Morganite's age and rank to act like this. It drew too much suspicion. There must have been some defect that developed during Morganite's crystallization process, or maybe she could get away with being arrogant because of her rank. "There is always a need for protocol."

"Oh, of course." The smirk widened into a grin as Morganite stood casually before her. For a moment, those pale pink eyes glanced past Peridot to her pearl and hung there in a way that made Peridot bristle. "You're a _peridot_ with a pearl of your own; surely you do something above and beyond standard protocol. Or were you just a convenient example?"

"Simply my job," Peridot managed to respond once she was sure she could keep her voice steady. The jab she ignored, for she knew that half the reason she _had_ a pearl was that it was politically prudent to demonstrate that compliance and hard work would be rewarded. Any feelings she had about being a pawn were beside the point. They all had their roles. "About supplies—"

The way Morganite was looking at her pearl was unsettling, and it was not unlike the avarice she sometimes saw in younger peridots who had yet to learn their place. Morganite glided past her and circled Peridot's pearl once with a critical eye, and then she stopped and started handling her pearl like it was something she was intending to buy. The pearl stood still and unresponsive as Morganite examined its— _her_ hands, her arms, the shimmering green skirt, her face, touching her gem—

Before she could think to act on protocol and respect Morganite's higher rank, or even entertain the thought that she may be shattered for this, Peridot stormed over and slapped away those wandering hands. "Leave _my pearl_ alone!"

"Finally, a response!" Morganite pulled away with a final pat to the pearl's cheek and laughed, which only made Peridot fume. "You'll forgive me, I absolutely _adore_ pearls. How many owners has it had?"

There was probably an insult lodged in there somewhere and Morganite was clearly abusing her rank just to get her to react, but Peridot grit her teeth and ignored it in favor of getting actual business conducted. "Four, including me. Now, about those supplies."

Morganite gave an exaggerated sigh and stepped back to collect her tablet from her pearl. For the briefest moment there looked to be a glance of sympathy exchanged between pearls, but it was gone before Peridot could blink. Morganite didn't seem to notice, caught up as she was in going through her tablet options. When she spoke again, her voice was serious and thankfully free of the tittering at Peridot's expense. "Give me your list and a deadline, and I'll smuggle what you need past the barricades that will go up once the Diamonds decide on the best course of action to deal with these rebels. Larger orders will be harder to get past the front lines, but I can manage and the rebels are spread too thin to monitor every warp pad and atmospheric entry. Your tablet?"

Rather than let her pearl get anywhere near Morganite again, she plucked the tablet from her hands, unlocked it and set the hover mode, and turned it over. Morganite made a disapproving sound as she activated the link between tablets and began the file transfer. "I'm pulling that list of yours and giving you my contact information and an owner's manual for proper maintenance of your pearl. Given that it is pre-owned—"

"I don't _need_ a manual." Perhaps the words came out a little sharp, but so far Morganite had done nothing to deserve Peridot's respect. What possible use could she get out of one, anyway? She was already amply familiar with pearls' vulnerability to chemicals and dehydration, and of the need to clean their gems immediately should anything that could cause the slightest scratch fall on them. Gentle wipe-downs of her pearl's gem at the end of each cycle became a ritual she enjoyed.

" _Given_ that it is pre-owned," Morganite began again. Though the smirk was still there, the humor was gone from her eyes. "There are certainly some activities that its previous owners did with it that you may be unaware of. I doubt there's much talk in the peridot cubbies about those."

Peridot had heard of _those_ activities before, had even engaged in something similar that was frankly less exploitative and more equal with some curious gems, and using a pearl that way seemed terribly unappealing. But then, higher-ranking gems often did things with their time that Peridot would never consider. "I do not have time to waste on such frivolous—"

"Think of it as maintenance." Morganite's smirk widened, and the predatory light returned to her eyes. It made Peridot's skin crawl. "Pre-owned pearls are such needy, grasping little things once they get a taste of such… frivolity. I'm doing you a favor."

Though the suggestion was completely ridiculous, Peridot bit her tongue until she could squeak out a word of gratitude without the tone of sarcasm she desperately wanted to use. As Morganite continued to transfer files, she glanced over at the pink pearl. Had there been a flinch when Morganite was talking about frivolity? It was probably a trick of the light, for the pearl remained motionless. Then Morganite returned her tablet and Peridot idly wondered if she should wipe it down with a cleaning solution.

"Well then, I should be going," Morganite finally said. She was, thankfully, back to business mode. "The basics I can get you in a few cycles. Send me your coordinates when you decide on your next site and I'll make the drop there. Is there anything else?"

"All I need are supplies." Peridot's voice was stilted in the attempt to adhere to formality and rank. Morganite dipped her head slightly in acknowledgement and turned to walk back up her gangplank. The pink pearl's eyes flitted to those of Peridot's pearl, and there was a moment of hesitation that Peridot couldn't possibly have imagined. But then the pink pearl turned, her shoulders sagging ever so slightly, and she followed her mistress into the ship. It lifted off as smoothly as it had landed, and Peridot found that she was unsettled.

Was she really sympathizing with a pearl? She tried to go over every memory she had of her own pearl, but she couldn't recall ever paying enough attention to notice anything. Was it a willful ignorance?

Peridot grunted to herself and poked around her tablet until she could find the owner's manual file. It was big, illustrated, and her eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out what some of the more complicated images were depicting. There was even a note encouraging her to let Morganite 'play' with her pearl sometime if she didn't feel up to the task. They were going to be such good friends, after all. _Ugh._ "Pearl, come here. Have your past mistresses done anything like this with you?"

Her pearl blinked in what was surely surprise and shuffled forward to look at the tablet Peridot angled towards her. Peridot tried to read her face, but she had too little experience to make out the subtle changes that might depict emotions she would recognize. But her pearl's voice was flat and quiet and revealed nothing. "Yes, Mistress."

"Is Morganite right? Is this something you need?" Peridot tried to watch her more closely. It mattered little, for Peridot certainly had no interest in such things (let alone indulge in such things with anyone that cannot consent, _Great Maker!_ she was a gem of _principles!_ ), but it was something to watch out for.

Her pearl went paler than usual at the question, and her folded hands squeezed tightly together. Tension, at least, was something Peridot recognized. Interesting. "I will do whatever you wish, Mistress."

A non-answer. She would have to come back to the question later. Peridot put her tablet into sleep mode and tucked it under her arm. "I wish to go back to the Prime Kindergarten and wipe that slime Morganite was exuding off of both you and my tablet."

Peridot did not wait for a response. She returned to the warp pad and her pearl followed closely behind, and they said nothing on the way back.

The walk allowed Peridot's mind to wander upon the new paths that opened up with the realization that she'd stopped calling her pearl an "it" in her mind and used the standard "her". Pearl development was outside her scope of work; those were made by moonstones. What she knew was that there was a seed matrix, usually a failed gem or a shard of a shattered gem that was reprogrammed with minimal functionality, and it was inserted into a bio tank where a genetically engineered animal laid down aragonite plates between biopolymers and continued doing so until the pearl was large enough to form. It was an old technology that remained in use purely because good-quality pearls were of value to gems rare enough to earn them. But they shouldn't be self-aware enough to have wants or needs, or to react to Morganite's obvious predation tendencies. Perhaps the nacre layers served the same way that solid crystal lattices did in providing a framework for gem development as a sapient race. It may be similar to how the decidedly non-crystalline structure of obsidians led to their aptitude for mural and monument development. But if pearls were anything like obsidians, why had no one noticed? Surely it would be mentioned somewhere. She would have to investigate. Rummage through old research papers if she could find them. But first, she needed to find the Beta site. And wipe down her tablet.

The pearl followed her off the main corridor, into her restricted access rest chamber. Peridot went straight for the small cleaning station and grabbed a soft cloth from the pile she usually cleaned her pearl with. It took her a moment to realize that her pearl was watching her. It took her a longer moment to get her thoughts into a semblance of order. How does one even start?

"You can, um, wipe yourself down if you want." The words were halting, stilted in the effort to reconcile the realization her thoughts were bringing her to with the way she had always talked around her pearl. The pearl kept watching her, impassive. "Or, not? Whichever you feel comfortable with."

Peridot turned to focus on cleaning the tablet and tried to avoid the subject of pearls entirely. Kindergartens she could do, and there was a structure that seldom varied and a methodology that she didn't even have to think about anymore. Step one was site scoping from geological surveys, step two was on-site visitation in case the survey drones missed anything, step three was planning. And so on. There was comfort in that kind of predictability. The geological survey was already done, and the eighty-nine Kindergarten sites ranked by suitability and personal preference. She would have to review the survey findings, make site visits to verify them and check if anything had been missed by the scouting drones, and select whichever site was the least likely to draw the rebels' attention. It was as good a time to start as any.

Her mood improved by the prospect of work, Peridot turned to get started and very nearly bumped into her pearl in the process. The pearl held a cloth and looked down upon it as if she couldn't make up her mind. The cloth was the oldest of the batch; little more than a well-worn blue rag, really. Peridot's breath caught in her throat as the pearl looked up from the rag with a lost expression.

The pearl's eyes were the shade of evergreens muted by fog; her hair was only slightly darker. She seemed to be watching Peridot carefully, ready to judge her poorly if she made any wrong move, and tentatively offered her the rag. Peridot had no idea how to respond, for it seemed that words had left her entirely. But the rag remained outstretched regardless of her inaction, and she reached out to take it from her pearl's hand. It felt soft and almost immaterial between her fingers. As immaterial as the time she'd spent with a pearl in her possession with no idea that there was more substance within that fragile gem than she had ever suspected. When she spoke again, it was with a bravado she thought she'd left behind with her first assignment.

"If anyone gives you a hard time, please let me know. I'll handle it." Was she cracked? The only promises she'd ever made was in regards to her own capabilities in her work. "If you don't want to do anything, tell me. I'll manage. If you need anything, just ask."

The pearl said nothing, but the lost look and tension were gone. In their place was the barest hint of a smile.

Stars, what was she thinking?


	3. A Change is Gonna Come

It took Peridot several days to review the geological survey findings in-depth. The sites she'd wanted to start Kindergartens at—the ones with just the right conditions—were too exposed, too easy to access. The great mountain ranges that would have been perfect for beryls, jades, lapis lazulis, and corundums were too obvious. The volcanoes that could have birthed obsidians, high-quality quatzes, chrysoberyls, moonstones, and tanzanites were at risk with a rebel bismuth running around. The more she thought on it, the more frequently she returned to the realization that she would have to limit herself to canyons. Slot canyons, specifically. They were grouped together last on the list of potential sites, for good reason. They were prone to erosion, they were often too narrow for proper injector placement, and they were almost always sedimentary in origin. Water percolating through sedimentary rock to contaminate and wash out the minerals in still-forming gems was an inevitability. Peridot despaired at the fact that she had even come to this so soon in the colonization process, but the rebellion wasn't giving her much choice.

Amidst all the planning and increasingly dire news coming in from both official channels and whispers from contacts Peridot had in various stages of the colonization effort, the one bright spot in her present circumstances was her pearl. Something between them seemed to change after Peridot realized that she wasn't dealing with an automaton, and little by little the pearl seemed to be showing signs of personality. Her curiosity being stronger than her belief in the rigidity of the order of the Diamonds, she started teaching things to her pearl. She began with simple chemistry and quantum physics, explaining how atoms arrange themselves in certain ways and form bonds with other atoms to create molecules that, with the right conditions and knowledge, can be manipulated and built upon to create the framework for gem development. Her lessons went on to the formation of minerals, and ultimately gems in a natural setting. She went on to the development of planets, how tectonic stressors were necessary for the development of Kindergartens and why they didn't use geologically inactive planets for colonization, and the ultimate fate of stars that would go on to forge heavier elements that would later seed newborn planets. When it came time to explain how the Kindergarten process actually worked, she took Pearl with her to review the Beta site.

In the end, she selected a slot canyon on the same continent as the Prime Kindergarten, for convenience's sake. They took her shuttle for the site survey and she pointed out all the things wrong with it: the narrow and uneven walls, the reduction of pressure that comes of injecting into sandstone rather than denser and heavier metamorphic rock, the permeability that would wash minerals out of the still-forming gems unless they rushed the process, the certainty of mineral contamination and the extra calculations Peridot would have to do to accommodate for that, the erosion of the sandstone by wind, rain, and periodic flash floods.

"Then why build the Kindergarten here if it's such a poor site?" Pearl asked in that tone that suggested that she still wasn't sure that she _should_ speak. The frequency in which she used that tone was diminishing by the day, and good riddance. Peridot was rather coming to enjoy when Pearl asked questions; she was a better student than most and reminded Peridot of a time when she had enjoyed training younger peridots. There were some things that Pearl didn't grasp easily, but at least she wasn't too proud to ask for clarification.

"In an ideal situation, this would be among the last of the Kindergartens in the installation sequence and there would be time enough to widen the chasms and straighten the walls," Peridot began. She was unable to keep the bitterness completely out of her voice, but at least Pearl didn't cringe anymore when she voiced her dissatisfaction. They were used to each other now, and it was comfortable in a way that Peridot had never experienced before. It was… 'Nice' wasn't a strong enough word for it, but it was the only one she could think of for their situation. "This rebellion seems to be more tenacious than usual and my Diamond wants quantity rather than quality. You can get some varieties of quartzes out of this kind of sandstone, but they are unlikely to perform as well as those made in a proper site. That, and these kinds of canyons are harder to see from the air and harder to attack in force. The rebels will have more difficulty finding and striking this Kindergarten than they will the Prime Kindergarten. It's not ideal, but it will do until the Diamonds can quell the rebellion and get everything back on track."

Pearl looked over her shoulder at the screen, and her voice was at its usual quiet, guileless tone. "Have you heard anything? About what's going to be done about them?"

"The rebels? I heard that the Diamonds are going to try another attempt at negotiating, but who knows what will happen if that doesn't work. Morganite will probably try infiltration, and maybe the Diamonds might try something else." Peridot shrugged as she closed out the initial survey report and returned to a topography map. The shuttle she programmed to settle at the canyon's exit, and it zipped along to follow orders. "Regardless, no attempt at revolution has ever been successful and the Diamonds won't stop until it's been quelled. Now, let's take a walk."

They left the shuttle as soon as it landed and stepped out into the bright, glaring midday sun set in a cloudless sky. The high ultraviolet index almost made her eyes ache from its intensity, and she was grateful that she had no real skin to speak of. She scurried into the shadows of the Beta site's cliffs and Pearl followed close behind. They paused long enough for Peridot to point out the channel where an intermittent stream would come to life when there was enough water available to support it, and she showed the pearl the effects of erosion in places where the stream turned into a river during high precipitation events. She was just preparing to explain wind erosion when her tablet beeped at her.

With a sigh, Peridot stepped back towards the exit and opened the link. Morganite looked more haggard than she had when Peridot first met her; until the connection opened, she was tugging at her hair and frowning at another screen. The frown then relaxed; Morganite looked almost thankful for the distraction.

"It took me a while to find the extra injectors, but I've got them," Morganite began, her voice settling more slowly than usual into her self-indulgent tones. Her fingers untangled themselves from her hair as she talked, as if she found this more calming than whatever she was dealing with. "I managed to find you a spare laser guidance system, too, but I think you might need to reprogram it. Got your project planned out?"

A number of things went through Peridot's mind at Morganite's apparent anxiety, but she ignored them for the greater needs of her upcoming work. "It's not ideal, and I could use a lapis lazuli to widen the chasms, but it will do. I'm sending you the coordinates to the Beta site in Facet Nine."

"There's still a lapis lazuli on Earth at Blue Diamond's behest. I'll get in touch with her for you." There was a brief pause as Morganite made a note to herself, and a bit of her old self seemed to return with the prospect of facilitating a social arrangement for Peridot. Not that Peridot was surprised, for morganites were supposed to be facilitators. "Can you have your next list ready by the time I make the drop?"

"Already working on it." Peridot paused for a moment, unsure if she should address the greater issues at all. But then, she did make a point of staying informed. "How goes the war effort?"

" _Awful_ ," Morganite exclaimed, and Peridot could just barely hear the hint of hysteria in her voice. Her fingers twined into her long waves of pink hair again. "I was all set up for a meeting with the rebels, and then one? two? of them _recognized_ me and I had to flee. I've never had that _happen_ before! And my Diamond, White Diamond, _still_ expects me to figure out another way to neutralize the rebellion."

While Peridot wasn't surprised that Morganite's luck ran out, the idea that the rebellion was still active was disquieting. It felt better to talk when a higher ranking gem was already showing her distress. "How are they surpassing our numbers? Surely superior numbers can crush any upstarts."

"The rebels have been using heterogeneous fusion." The statement was so plain that Peridot almost glossed right over it. "It's more powerful than anything we've seen before."

"That's ridiculous! Who would dare?" The very idea was absurd. Rubies fused with their own regularly. Quartz soldiers could, but they generally thought of it as cheating. But different types of gems? How could anyone have gotten the idea to do so? Different gems had different properties, and the inability to synchronize their wavelengths alone would prevent such a fusion.

"It's true. That's how Blue Diamond lost one of her best sapphires." That thought tripped up Peridot, for she had heard nothing of this. Or was that what her Diamond was alluding to when last they spoke? Perhaps she should re-examine her contacts in the court of her own Diamond. "One minute the rebels were attacking, and the next a ruby dared to fuse with the sapphire. It was appalling! That's how they recognized me, I was there when that misbegotten fusion happened."

Though she doubted that one encounter would have exposed Morganite's plans to follow her standard method of operations in the wiping out of yet another rebellion, Peridot suspected that the sapphire's precognition might have something to do with it. Still, this told her a few things: that neither the standard tactics of overwhelming the opposition with superior numbers or destroying them from within would work, that the Kindergartens would likely be a distraction to the rebellion at best, that the rebellion was operating with advantages that had never been available before, and that the Diamonds likely had no idea what to do. It was sobering. The order of the Diamonds was sacrosanct, and where would any of them be without order? "Do you know what the rebels want?"

Morganite vented a laugh that was a little too strained and humorless to be natural. "They want us to leave! Stop colonization entirely."

"Absurd." Really, what else was there to say? Gem production required certain conditions, all of which this planet provided. Abandoning an entire colony, including all of the construction and planning that was already either completed or underway, was completely unheard of. It took more time and resources than the average gem ever suspected to develop a colony. The Red Eyes and drop ships didn't come from the aether fully formed, they were built by hardworking gems who took pride in their skills. Nephrites and peridots, while made with certain traits that gave them an edge in their fields, had to be trained. Diopsides had to calculate warp pad trajectories and set up triangulation systems to properly align the galaxy warps, and program the galaxy warp networks to accept a new destination. Bismuths worked with anorthites to construct spires, temples, and arenas. And so on. A colony wasn't just an occupying force, it was everything that ever contributed to its development. Simply leaving wasn't an option, and it certainly wasn't respectful to the immeasurable time and effort spent by countless gems.

"The Diamonds will figure something out." Morganite said, though whether it was to reassure Peridot or herself, she didn't quite know. "I'll drop off the first shipment by sunset. See you then."

Peridot nodded absently and closed the connection with a mumbled farewell. Pearl approached her with slow, deliberate steps as she tucked her tablet back under her arm. "It's going badly, isn't it?"

"So it seems, but these things have a way of working out," Peridot offered as reassurance. Silly as it was, she liked the thought of comforting Pearl. The shy smiles she got were always worth it. "I've never heard of a rebellion succeeding. Now, we were on wind erosion, right?"

With renewed hesitance and her eyes never leaving Peridot's, Pearl slipped within Peridot's personal comfort zone to grasp her free hand. Peridot wasn't entirely sure why, but it felt… nice. Long, willowy fingers interlaced with hers and squeezed lightly. "Is… this okay? I don't want to get lost."

"It's fine!" Perhaps Peridot would later feel ridiculous for grinning at the small display of intimacy, but right then she couldn't be bothered. No gem had ever made her feel quite like this and she wasn't sure how to proceed. Still, they were here for a reason and she could at least get on with that. "Now then, we've been over the rock cycle. What does the strata you're seeing tell you?"

Peridot listened and only spoke up rarely to correct Pearl as they strolled the canyon floor. The way Pearl's eyes lit up as she recounted her teachings and used them to interpret what they saw was infinitely more satisfying than training a dozen novice peridots who thought they knew better. Peridots generally didn't appreciate sandfalls quite as much, either. They walked for hours, until the sunlight from above started dwindling and they were approaching the almost too-narrow south entrance. Caught up as they were in the lesson, they only noticed Morganite's ship waiting for them when they heard the engines humming. Pearl broke away then to slip behind the curve of the wall. Frankly, Peridot couldn't blame her. She pressed ahead until the narrow walls opened up to the dried-out floodplain, where Morganite had parked her ship and was waiting with her pearl.

"Enjoy your little walk?" Morganite was back to being smug, apparently, which rankled and made Peridot less sympathetic to the stress she had exhibited earlier. Yet her fingers were raking through her pearl's mop of short pink hair, which suggested to Peridot that this was a nervous gesture. "Where's your pearl?"

"Back watching the Prime Kindergarten." The lie rolled smoothly off of her tongue. Peridots weren't generally natural liars, but she had spent so many years in the service of the Diamonds that watching her back around the more ambitious gems of her own kind had become second nature. Being around higher-ranking gems used to the intrigues of court life had also given her an advantage, and at times she prided herself with the idea that she could thrive just as well in court as any of them.

Morganite laughed, and Peridot had to tamp down her irritation at the sound. "You entrust a _pearl_ with running a Kindergarten? What next, are you going to give her a sword?" The last query had an edge to it, and Peridot rather felt like she was being pinned and examined.

"Hardly. S— It is perfectly capable of relaying orders and starting up pre-programmed injectors. I require nothing more from it than that." Peridot forced herself to look past Morganite and the hint of discomfort on the pearl's face, to the fused anorthites unloading fresh injectors from the ship. They looked like they'd been used before, but at this point in the war effort, Peridot wasn't going to complain. The injectors were set against the canyon walls, drills pointing downwards. She could barely make out the crate next to them, which she suspected contained the laser guidance system. "Thank you for the delivery."

"It gives me something to do," Morganite responded dryly. "What mixtures are you going to want for this site?"

Peridot wasted no time in activating her tablet and marking down her notes. "With a lapis lazuli's help, we could perhaps get a brigade out of this Kindergarten. One thousand, five hundred quartzes overall. Primarily cryptocrystalline in nature. A few hundred jaspers and carnelians. Maybe fifty citrines if we can even out a few walls and inject closer to the base to take advantage of the pressure. I'm not sure if you can get any tiger's eyes out of this, but it's worth a try. So, let's say eight hundred jaspers, six hundred carnelians, fifty citrines, fifty tiger's eyes. Primarily iron and iron oxide mixes." That said, she sent the list to Morganite's inbox. Morganite herself left not long afterwards, her pearl trailing after her.

The years that followed were marked by an increase of raids by the rebels against gem installations. Peridot stuck to her Kindergartens, confident that the Diamonds would figure out what to do with the ingrates. The Prime Kindergarten she put extra care into, because she could take no pride in the Beta site. The injectors were programmed perfectly, with just the right mineral percentages in their melt tanks, and they followed the laser guidance system as it plotted out their paths and pointed their drills with respectable precision. The first batch of amethysts emerged, were given their identification codes, and shipped off to be trained. Pearl came and went, and always she returned with some new flower or another to share with Peridot. She should have asked about those absences, but she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on such things whenever Pearl smiled like that at her. She had long since stopped giving Pearl any orders, but Pearl still remained at her side. Deep down, Peridot was grateful. Perhaps that was why she never asked where Pearl disappeared to.

The Beta site progressed in fits and starts. Blue Diamond's lapis lazuli dropped by a few times to run the river south into the canyon, widening the chasms with far greater speed than one might expect from natural erosion. Only then could she begin work on the laser guidance system. It was an older model, and so badly misaligned that she wanted to demand a replacement from Morganite. Yet the few times she tried to contact Morganite again, she ran into busy signals or one of the three pearls urging her to call back later. Several of the injectors had to be patched up or cannibalized wholesale to repair the others. The mixtures she needed to begin injecting never came, and Emerald had started barking at her for updates on the Beta site. Her own contacts in the Diamond courts were too quiet for her tastes. Through all of that, Pearl remained at her side and soothed her with light touches and that hum of contentment that reminded her that things weren't so bad. More than once in her distress, she ended up with Pearl's arms around her. It was only a bump in the road. It would be fine. It had to be, because the Diamonds were all-knowing.

After years of silence, Morganite returned with only a small fraction of the mixtures she'd promised, and half of it wasn't even useful for the Beta Kindergarten's setting. The long, sleek pink hair that had looked like it belonged more in a Diamond court than in a battered cargo ship was now frazzled, torn, and paler than it had been. The ever-present pink pearl didn't look much better, and she was probably bearing the brunt of her mistress' moods. Peridot disregarded this as she demanded an explanation for the botched delivery.

Morganite's eyes darted around anxiously, as if she expected to be pounced at any moment. "Didn't anyone tell you? Pink Diamond was shattered. Things are a little hectic right now."

Peridot's jaw clamped shut as her mind kept running the word "shattered" over and over again. Who could do that? Why? But for all the questions that echoed within her, nothing could stop her from feeling that the ground had just given way under her.


	4. Torn Between The Lover And The Ideas

Note: Warning for OC!pearlidot I guess ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

* * *

Never in the history of gemkind had a Diamond ever been shattered. They could be made, of course; they were forged in the cores of dying stars with technology passed down from the Great Maker herself. The emergence of Pink Diamond had drawn Homeworld's elites to the system to watch, and they had surrounded the star in a loose bubble of ships. Peridot had still been a novice at the time, but her mentor brought her to witness the emergence of a Diamond because she had been the brightest of her batch and deemed deserving of such an honor. Perhaps that was why she had always felt a certain fondness for Pink Diamond even though she had been made for another. She could clearly recall the star's pulses fading to nothing as the carbon in its core crystallized completely, the almost unbearable anticipation as they waited for the Diamond to form, and finally elation as the star shed the last of its gasses in a pale imitation of its earlier nova stage and a pink hand reached out from the shell of cast-off stellar materials. She remembered finally releasing her hands in relief; the anxiety had her wringing them to the point of pain. The Diamond ships drawing toward the remains of the star to welcome their new sister and pull her from the carcass of a star almost went unnoticed. There had been broadcasts later of the most magnificent parts of the emergence, but watching them was never the same as being there.

Peridot could watch the security camera footage of the rebel rose quartz shattering Pink Diamond a thousand times and it would never feel as real as being there. A small mercy, perhaps. Or maybe she should have been there, even though there was nothing a peridot could do against a quartz. Anything was better than feeling like something had drilled into her gem and emptied it. Pearl, thankfully, diverted any visitors and took her calls for her. Most were considerate of the fact that Pink Diamond's death affected all of them, but she could hear Emerald become more and more irate each time Pearl answered for her. When finally she gathered herself enough to respond, she took the tablet from Pearl and awaited the barrage. That Pearl's hand slipped into hers to squeeze reassuringly surely had no bearing on the fact that she felt a little better. "Emerald," she managed to grunt. She wasn't particularly up to saluting.

"Peridot Facet-1F Cut-2AA!" Emerald's waspish voice had a way of piercing through most barriers. "Where have you _been?_ You missed three update deadlines. I've been generous, but I'm going to have to report you to your supervisor if you miss one more."

"Busy." Her voice was flatter and emptier than she thought it should be. It was hard to care. "The final battalions from the initial injection phase should be coming out of the Prime Kindergarten in a few months to a year. There are only enough materials available at the Beta Kindergarten to start a small company." She didn't complain about how the Beta site's walls were still too crooked and that the lapis lazuli had started treating her calls like something to be answered at a whim, or how Morganite seemed to have disappeared again. More and more it seemed that the Beta site was a lost cause. What did it say about her ability to do her job when she no longer got anything out of it?

Emerald looked pleased. How anyone could manage that in such uncertain times, Peridot had no idea. "Good. Alert me when those battalions are available. Given the reduction in materials needed for more troops, I think it's safe to say that the Beta Kindergarten can be decommissioned. No need to go through all that trouble."

That gave Peridot pause. Had the Diamonds discovered a way to win this war? She could think of no other reason why she would be asked to cancel the development of a Kindergarten. For the first time since Pink Diamond's shattering, there was a glimmer of hope. Still, the Beta Kindergarten had been her Diamond's request, and she had to honor it as a matter of principle. The materials and equipment were already there, and it would be a waste to abandon everything. "Beta Kindergarten was requested by my Diamond for Pink Diamond. It should be completed."

"Do it on your own time, then." Emerald's voice dropped to a chill reminiscent of deep space. "Until further notice, Prime Kindergarten is your priority. Send me your report within the next three days and I'll ignore your recent lapses in judgment. Good day."

Without thinking to salute, give a farewell, or do anything that fit within acceptable social parameters, Peridot closed the connection on the tablet and dumped it on the nearest console's surface before she could throw it at something. Pearl was at her side in seconds, and slim arms folded around her back not long afterwards. Pearl hummed soothingly as she stroked the setting of her gem at the back of her neck and Peridot returned the hug. "I was made for this," Peridot mumbled into Pearl's bare shoulder. "Why don't I want to do it anymore?"

The humming paused as Pearl went quiet, but they remained in embrace. When Pearl did speak, her voice was soft, almost as if she was afraid of speaking up. But still she pressed on. "You don't have to be defined by what you were made for. You can be more."

It sounded too much like what every rebellion espoused: defiance of the natural order of things for personal gain, selfishness at the expense of the greater good. Pearl had been disappearing more frequently of late, and always she came back with new flowers or some new observations she'd been making. The more Peridot thought on it, the more these things seemed like distractionary measures. And if Peridot followed that line of thought any further, she knew she wouldn't like whatever she'd discover. And yet, all signs pointed to the suggestion that Pearl was meeting with the rebels. She should plead with Pearl to stop running off to the rebels, to think of keeping herself alive, but she was equally afraid of driving her away. So she held Pearl as close as she could and buried her face in the crux between Pearl's shoulder and her neck, hoping to whatever would listen—the stars, the Great Maker herself—that Pearl could avoid discovery for as long as this war lasted. "Don't let anyone else hear you talk like that. Please."

"Can I still trust you?" The words were barely whispered, but they felt so heavy. The fingers at the setting of her gem stopped briefly, and Peridot squeezed a little tighter. Like it could possibly keep Pearl from leaving if she really wanted to.

Peridot chuckled dryly. "If anyone finds out what you've been doing, it won't be from me. You matter too much." She wondered sometimes when that happened, but she'd had Pearl with her for three thousand years. This sentiment she had for Pearl seemed to be something that grew, as quietly and unremarkable as the depositing of silt in a riverbed, until it became something she could no longer ignore.

"Can you do me a little favor?" Pearl asked when she pulled away just enough to look her in the eye after what felt like entirely too short a time. One of her hands left its place on Peridot's back and brushed away the yellow-green hair that framed her face. "Can you call me Mist? Just when we're alone like this."

"I don't understand, but all right." After all, what was one more concession? Understanding wasn't required, just accommodation.

Then P— Mist did something she hadn't expected. She leaned in and tilted her head just enough to brush her lips against Peridot's. It was… new, and different, and felt strangely nice. Nothing at all like the brief flares of passion that sparked a few affairs and burned out shortly afterwards. "I love you."

It was an archaic concept, love. It had been phased out while Peridot was still only a couple of thousand years out of the ground, supplanted by devotion to Homeworld and the Diamonds. It was deemed impractical to the greater good of gemkind, and propaganda stated that the greatest positive emotion, the greatest love, was for the Diamonds all gems were made for. Over time, even the word "love" was stricken from every official record and entertainment media. She hadn't known what it meant until now, and now she understood why the Diamonds found it so dangerous. Without love, gems could remain loyal to Homeworld and the Diamonds. With it, even loyalty was suspect when one can find a love that supersedes the greater good.

Eventually they parted and Mist again disappeared on the Kindergarten warp pad. Peridot was never sure if she was coming back these days, but it felt wrong to follow her and pressuring her about it would surely drive Mist away for good. So she checked on the incubating gems in the Prime Kindergarten before going on to work again on the Beta site. It was still as much a travesty as ever, but at least it kept her too busy to worry over Mist being caught. Somewhere between manually programming the site-of-penetration coordinates into one injector and the next, she wondered if she should just free Mist and be done with it. Mist had always been delightful company, but she was also her own gem and it felt… _off_ , now, to think of her as belonging to Peridot. Possessions did not enjoy watching sandfalls and weaving flowers into wreaths. On the other hand, keeping her listed as owned could protect her if she was found out. Peridot could take the blame and receive little more than a slap on the wrist. It was something she would have to bring up with Mist, if she ever came back.

Mist returned not long afterwards, and for a while they discussed the best option for their situation. Officially, Mist was still listed as being in Peridot's possession. Unofficially, she was functionally free and would be so officially once this war was over with. She had squealed in delight and smothered her in kisses, and Peridot was quickly caught up in her mood. Still, there was an underlying current of worry and unease that never left, even when it was evident that Mist wasn't intending on leaving her anytime soon.

That unease spiked one morning, when the first cracks appeared in the walls that incubated last batch of initial Prime Kindergarten gems. Phase two would soon be underway, and she was preparing the laser guidance system for the next set of walls when Mist rushed to her. Her words jumbled together so much that Peridot had a hard time making them out. When she finally got Mist to slow down, she wondered if it was better if she didn't know.

"We need to work on the Beta Kindergarten," Mist said once she had taken a stabilizing breath. Her eyes were wide with urgency. "Please. This can wait."

This was it, then. What Peridot had been expecting ever since her Diamond commanded her to start work on the Beta Kindergarten. Mist laced their fingers together and pulled her to the warp pad, which took them to the Beta Kindergarten. Peridot let herself be distracted with gentle kisses and ignored the tablet when it started beeping at her. She answered it at nightfall and discovered several things: the Prime Kindergarten fell to the rebels and its newly-emerged gems slaughtered, and Morganite's ship had been destroyed en route to the Kindergarten. Amidst the casualties was the lapis lazuli who had aided her in the development of the Beta Kindergarten and arrived two days too early for their meeting, and her gem was taken for questioning.

It left her feeling hollowed-out all over again. Should she have been there? Not that there was anything she could have done, and Mist had ensured that she wasn't there when the slaughter happened. As she sank to the floor of the Beta Kindergarten control room, she wondered which way was up. Mist snuggled next to her, their hands folded together, and waited patiently until Peridot felt like she could move again.

"Come with me," Mist urged her at last, with a brightness in her deep green eyes that had never been so alive when she was still the docile little thing Peridot mistook her for. "You'd be such an asset to the rebellion—"

Peridot's eyes darted around the room, half-expecting some black tourmaline to leap from the shadows to report to the Diamonds. Her voice fell to an urgent hiss, fear overtaking depression for the time being. "Are you cracked?! None of the past rebellions ever worked out!"

"None of the past rebellions had Rose Quartz, or different-gem fusion, or the Renegade!" The grin on Mist's face faltered and faded as she watched Peridot. She squeezed Peridot's hands in reassurance, but it didn't help. Nothing helped the overwhelming urge to hyperventilate. "Peridot, you could be so much more than this. I know you, you're not happy with your niche. I don't think you ever were."

The urge to draw smaller and hide from the wrath of the Diamonds was overwhelming, and Peridot squeezed her eyes shut. Mist was right, of course, but there was nothing for her beyond the role for which she was made. She'd never even considered it. She could never adapt; she had spent too many years doing what she was made for, and seventy-five thousand years was too long a time to begin changing now. Her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms folded tightly over them. "I can't," she managed to croak at last. She couldn't even articulate _why_ , for it was all jumbled in her mind: the Diamonds would never let the rebellion succeed, the Diamonds would figure out a way to cripple it and make the rebels disappear after they'd been made to 'see the error of their ways' and paraded as examples, there had been a secret weapon rumored to be in development but none of her contacts knew what it was, and how would society function if the rebellion won after all, and, and, and…

The kiss distracted her from her own thoughts, grounding her in a way that nothing else seemed to anymore. It was only broken when she relaxed. "It's okay," Mist said at last, her palm cupping Peridot's cheek in that gently reassuring manner of hers. "You don't have to join, or fight if you do. I've talked to Rose Quartz and she said that there will always be a place waiting for you."

Peridot said nothing then, and over time she said less and less to everyone who spoke to her until the barest minimum of words could suffice for communication. Nothing beyond the connection she had with Mist really seemed to matter anymore.

Beta Kindergarten became her self-appointed duty. They long gave up any semblance of order when setting up the injectors; the lapis lazuli was gone and the laser guidance system couldn't be repaired. The injectors drilled, deposited their loads, and moved on to rot because she had run out of materials to fill their melt tanks. Mist used her training to experiment with one of the injectors and prove a theory: that with the right modifications, she could create a beta-quartz that would hopefully stabilize into the strongest jasper Homeworld would ever see. It was an ambitious idea because no peridot had ever considered injecting beta-quartzes in matrices in which they didn't naturally occur. But then, Mist had proven that she was just as good as any peridot in the role of a Kindergartener, and that realization was the one bright spot in this disaster of a job.

As the gems incubated and she tinkered with some salvaged gold wire, Homeworld was losing more and more ground on Earth. A spire fell into rebel hands and she shaped the twisted gold wires into an armlet, an arena fell and she managed to shape more gold wire into a respectable pattern. She gave it to Mist, who was as generous with her kisses as always, and wondered if it was all that would be left of her when this was over.

The command to pull out came not long afterwards, and it would be a few years yet before the incubating gems emerged. Peridot busied herself with preparing her shuttle and was in the middle of checking the vacuum seal on the hatch when Mist came to her. The armlet gleamed in the sunlight, but it didn't distract from the solemn look on Mist's face. Peridot set aside her screwdriver, certain that this would be it for them.

"I should be with the Crystal Gems," Mist said at last. She blinked more than usual, and she rubbed viciously at one of her eyes. Something within Peridot sank at that. "It's not fair that they're fighting when I'm still here. Please go without me. I'll look after the Kindergarten gems when they emerge, I promise."

This really was it, then. Peridot's throat suddenly felt tight. "I'll wait until the last minute for you to come back. There are colonies we can disappear in, I just need to check—"

"No." The word was practically strangled out. Great Maker, Mist was _crying_ now. Peridot reached out to brush away the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Just leave. Come back only when it's safe."

"I'll stay, then," Peridot responded, clasping Mist's hands in hers. The thought of staying for some unknown end terrified her, but she couldn't leave Mist to face it alone. She tried and failed to don a cocky smile that felt like it belonged in another lifetime. "Rose Quartz said that there was a place for me, right?"

Mist's eyes searched hers, and she pulled her hands away only to embrace Peridot. She gave her the briefest of kisses before resting her forehead on Peridot's shoulder. The tears began soaking the illusionary material of her uniform, and Mist's arms wrapped around her back. "Never forget that I love you, Peridot."

Peridot relaxed into the embrace, and she barely heard something being summoned out of the gem on the back of Mist's hand. There was a motion, and a prick of something cold and hard just above Peridot's gem. Her eyes widened, but she made no effort to break away when the knife sank into her form. She lost consciousness in seconds.

When Peridot returned to consciousness, she found that she had reformed back on Homeworld. Mist must have thrown her gem in the shuttle and set the autopilot to take her home. Another peridot, the kyanite who was her supervisor, and a citrine waited for her. The domed waiting room she formed in was plastered and glazed in shades of blue, indicating to her that she was in Blue Diamond's territory, and the other peridot was going through her tablet. Probably verifying whether or not she had been involved in the rebellion. At least in that respect, Peridot had been thorough. She had removed everything that could be traced back to Mist long ago, including every instance of her access from the log files and everything that could possibly indicate that anything had been tampered with. The other peridot hummed and turned over her tablet, and now that she was closer, she could tell that she was one of Yellow Diamond's. The citrine glared at her, but otherwise made no move to intimidate her. Not that she needed to.

"You had a pearl," Kyanite said in that dispassionate, officious tone she tended to take. "It was not with you when your shuttle was found. Where is it?"

"Stolen by the rebellion." The bitterness in her voice sold it, she thought. At least the sentiment was something she didn't have to lie about. She should go back as soon as she could to find Mist again and convince her that she could find freedom elsewhere.

Kyanite nodded sympathetically and gestured to the hulking citrine. "You will not be shattered. We have discovered no evidence that you worked without Homeworld's best interests in mind. However, in order to atone for your critical lapse in judgment in continuing to build the Beta Kindergarten in spite of Emerald's orders, you are being reassigned to a project for Yellow Diamond. Citrine will take you to her."

The salute came automatically, and then Citrine escorted her to the warp pad that would take her to Yellow Diamond's territory. The trip allowed her to arrange her thoughts and shuffle her feelings so far back into her mind that she hoped they would never emerge again. Perhaps it was better not to feel anymore. If she could hide behind the mask of her past self, maybe the Diamonds would never suspect that she had considered leaving their service for a pearl.

All in all, Peridot thought it could be worse. At least she wasn't going to be shattered. She would reconstruct her old self, the one that existed before Mist and believed in the majesty of the Diamonds, and keep the self that Mist brought to life hidden so deeply behind it that no one would ever think she dared to slip out of the regimented mindset that the Diamonds demanded. As she entered Yellow Diamond's sanctum, the sense of doom didn't quite dissipate. Not doom for herself, necessarily, but for something else that she couldn't define. That Blue Diamond sent her to Yellow Diamond instead of dealing with her recent lapses of judgment personally suggested to her that her value as a worker was greater than her mistakes. Which was something. Still…

Yellow Diamond was waiting for her; her petty little pearl sneered nearby. She remembered resenting the pearl the first time they'd encountered each other, but that had been long before Mist had entered her world. Now Peridot recognized the pearl's attitude as the small pleasures that only the most powerless can enjoy. Though the Diamond sat as rigid and commanding as ever, there was a exhaustion about her that hadn't been there the last time Peridot worked for her. "Do you understand why you were sent here?"

"No." Her voice was properly deferential and she didn't quite dare to look up at Yellow Diamond. "I only know that you need a project done."

"Yes. Complete this and your debt to Homeworld will be considered paid in full. The prehnites have conceived a geoweapon of exceptional power. Your task will be to see that their vision is realized. Pearl?"

The pearl stepped forward to hand Peridot a data crystal and returned to her Diamond's side with that air that was as self-important as Peridot remembered. Curious, Peridot slipped the crystal into the port in her tablet. The hologram that emerged showed a variety of shattered gems fused together in the asthenosphere of Earth, with the title 'The Cluster' written in the file header. She wanted to laugh at its impracticality, at Yellow Diamond's thinly-veiled enthusiasm for it, at the Great Maker for putting her in this position. But she didn't have a choice, did she? "I'll do it."

* * *

Note: The cover pic is by polymethodical on tumblr, who is amazing. Thanks!


	5. Wish You Were Here

In her life, Pearl had had four owners. The first one, the trapiche emerald who commissioned her, was prone to a particular brand of sadism that took delight in humiliating others. Trapiche Emerald got bored of her once she learned to stop responding and threw her on the auction block. A pink zircon bought her next, and her vice was violating the powerless. Pearl learned to detach herself from reality when that happened, and soon enough Zircon got bored of her and passed her on to Grandidierite as a gift. Grandidierite was the worst of them, she was both overly liberal with the back of her hand and she enjoyed violating her pearls. When Grandidierite got frustrated with her dissociation, Pearl was marked for harvesting and sent away. She had been saved by a moonstone from the committee that gifted used pearls to exceptional working-class gems and given to Peridot.

For the first few months, Pearl expected the worst. She cringed when Peridot's voice raised in frustration, flinched if her new mistress made any sudden movements, and waited anxiously for the next order because she was desperately afraid of being sent back to the harvesting pool. Yet Peridot made no outlandish requests, only laid a hand on her to maintain her gem with a gentleness that Pearl had found surprising, and she learned that the expressive gesticulations and loud rambling were how Peridot vented to herself. Her new mistress frequently talked to herself in order to work out some problem or another, and slowly Pearl's defenses lowered with the realization that Peridot had never even thought to take her problems out on her. Instead of being told to perform some obscene act or another, she was introduced to tools and their uses and expected to help Peridot with her work. It was almost as if Peridot didn't quite know what to _do_ with a pearl of her own other than treat her like a junior peridot.

The pattern that they fell into was comfortable. There was Peridot's work, where Pearl assisted her by handing her tools when she was otherwise preoccupied or they were out of reach. There were the daily sessions in which Peridot wiped her gem with some mineral-rich liquid and soft cloths, even though it was largely unnecessary. Peridot had asked her to dance or sing very early on, but those requests always had the stilted tone of formality that made Pearl suspect that Peridot was only making such requests because some other gem told her that that was what pearls were _supposed_ to do, and Peridot functioned on protocol, social expectations, and a particular reverence to the way things were supposed to be. But Peridot never hit her, humiliated her, asked more of her than she could manage, or violated her. Peridot never spoke harshly to her and often used to same polite, overly-formal tones with Pearl that she used with everyone else. Whenever Pearl made mistakes, Peridot shrugged them off and helped her figure out what she did wrong when she needed the clarification. Peridot treated her with more respect and trust than Pearl had ever experienced before, as if she was a real gem. Sometimes, if Pearl allowed her to think too deeply about it, she would find herself a quiet corner and cry with relief.

Two thousand years into their peculiar relationship, Pearl decided to cross a line and do something without being requested. It started small, with the organizing and cleaning of Peridot's tools the way she liked. Peridot actually gave a genuine smile, which she rarely did, and Pearl resolved to do more to keep Peridot happy. When Peridot became distressed over the explosive failure of a laser guidance system, Pearl dared to reach out and soothe her. Peridot had startled at the sudden contact, but she calmed quickly under Pearl's touch and never made a move to dissuade her. Being able to manipulate another gem's moods was a strange sort of power, and Pearl reveled in its utilization because a happy Peridot was more than willing to overlook her curiosity and any transgressions. It was a meager sort of thing to enjoy, but it was all she had.

When Peridot was assigned to work on the Kindergartens in the Crystal system, Pearl became aware of a number of things: that this planet was so green and varied that it rivaled the most brilliant gems and all the splendor of Homeworld, that there was an exciting undercurrent of disquiet within the court gems that Peridot had contact with, and that there was an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the spread of rumors about a renegade pearl. Pearl had thought it a jest at first, or a scare tactic to keep other pearls in line, but Morganite's head pearl had slipped her a recording that had come from a pearl who was present in Blue Diamond's court when the different-gem fusion first appeared. She had no words for the feeling that welled inside her at the sight of another pearl fighting like a quartz, but it made her re-examine everything she knew. It was always simply assumed that pearls were frail and could only do a minimum of physical labor, and therefore their role was to serve as decorative status symbols and toys, yet a pearl had destroyed the forms of rubies and quartz guards with nothing but two slim swords that didn't seem up to the task. While Pearl had no desire to fight, maybe she could find her own way to be noteworthy, too.

Thus began her work on Peridot. Her mistress was unhappy with the Beta Kindergarten project and uncomfortable with being told to venture past her standard business practices. Before Pearl, Peridot had been a lowly technician who rose in rank to Kindergartener through sheer perseverance. Eventually she had trained newborn peridots and lost any joy she had in the task when they proved to be arrogant and unwilling to understand that study was not the same as experience. So much of Peridot's worldview was wrapped up in the belief that everything had its place and purpose in the universe that Pearl despaired at ever getting her to step outside of it. Yet Peridot's actions betrayed a schism in her worldview. She created little toys and meaningless simulacra sometimes, often with such finely-crafted features that they seemed alive, but destroyed them before anyone else could find them. It was a shame, for Pearl would have been willing to hide these things for her, but such requests seemed to be outside the scope of Peridot's imagination or willingness to use her as a pearl. The one time Pearl had dared address the issue, Peridot dismissed her little creations as simple dexterity exercises that any gem could indulge in and didn't seem to be willing to make the connection between her creations and obsidian-made murals and statuary.

Pearl didn't understand why this schism between Peridot's actual beliefs, lipservice to the order of the Diamonds, and actions existed. It hadn't been present in her past owners, but her past owners had all been a least half Peridot's age. Was it a relic of a more liberal time? A survival tactic? Pearl couldn't possibly know, and Peridot seldom talked about the past in any way that would give her a hint to work with.

At some point, Pearl's interest in Peridot and her contradictions expanded to include her work. She was mystified by how much knowledge went into the creation of gems. It was like there was an entire world to discover, and Peridot thought nothing of letting Pearl watch as she worked. When observation didn't help her ability to understand, she took her first steps in asking questions. Peridot seemed to have no issues with explaining things to her, even when she wasn't made for this. As time went on and Pearl grew bolder in the types of questions she asked, Peridot seemed to appreciate the opportunity to lecture. Before she knew it, she was learning astronomy, physics, chemistry, basic mechanics, geology, and how everything tied together in a Kindergartener's work. She asked to help and was taught the ins and outs of injector operations and maintenance, and eventually got enough of them up and running to be entrusted with injecting an entire wall with gems. Peridot was delighted with the more in-depth questions and turned over her tablet in an effort to teach her how to do her own research, and she took the opportunity to devour research papers and form her own theories. Perhaps it was only natural that her curiosity led her to looking at Peridot's correspondences and news alerts, but Peridot didn't seem to mind.

When Pearl finally decided to seek out the rebels, it was with her mind already made to drag Peridot with her eventually. She _liked_ Peridot, contradictory old-fashioned beliefs and all, and she wanted both of them to realize their full potential. Eventually the Crystal Gems must have gotten tired of her following the reports of each of their strikes and sent a human emissary to test her. He was a boy then, not yet the King Dumuzid he would eventually become, and it seemed that the test was to see how she would respond to him. She had been curious, scared, and perhaps overly wary about letting him approach until she saw that he was unarmed. She couldn't make out what he said, but in the end it didn't matter. The next to approach her was another pearl who was not the Renegade, but she made her offer nonetheless: she wanted to help the rebellion and all she could offer was the information she got from Peridot's correspondences. She passed along little bits of information at first, just enough to gain their trust. Once she met with Garnet, she passed along more. She warned them of Morganite's history of sabotaging rebellions and what Peridot told her of what happened to those rebels who failed. Garnet told her that because of her information, the war would end a few hundred years earlier.

It was lovely to finally meet the Crystal Gems. Even if they were intimidating at first, they were welcoming. Rose Quartz was as formidable on the battlefield as rumor suggested, and still she was more caring than Pearl ever thought a quartz was capable of. While the Renegade was disappointed that Pearl had no interest in fighting, she was supportive of her decision to serve as informant. Bismuth's enthusiasm was intoxicating, and she and Snowflake helped her through self-realization and creating a pool of names from which she might select hers eventually.

Garnet was the one she spent the most time with, and even then they only talked when she needed to pass on information. The subject of Peridot came up with greater frequency once Garnet helped her figure out that she was in love, and it was Garnet who suggested that she remain honest with Peridot about her feelings when she could afford to be. The Renegade expressed concern over the possibility that she might be confusing love with the loyalty that pearls were programmed with for their mistresses and mixed it with gratitude for Peridot's oblivious kindness in the wake of a bad series of mistresses. It was something that still bothered her deeply, but she had time aplenty for introspection while Peridot worked herself to exhaustion and the war continued apace. By the time she selected a name for herself, she was convinced that she loved Peridot and that the little part of Peridot that she tried to suppress felt the same. She simply had to bring that out somehow.

"She's scared, I think," Mist confided in Garnet one day, when the snow was thick on the ground and it drifted in even the slightest breeze. The ice in the sky gave the full moon and stars a surreal glow, and she wanted nothing more than to lie back in the soft snow and revel in the beauty of this world. If she thought too much about it, she would end up remembering the worlds that died during colonization and her personal problems would feel insignificant again. "Everything is about order and placement with her, and I wish I knew how to convince her that chaos and stepping outside of bounds is natural, too."

"Your mistress is an older gem." It wasn't a question. Garnet never asked them, she merely waited until someone provided answers.

A fond smile tugged at her lips at the thought. "She still believes in that old Great Maker theory that went out of fashion seventy thousand years ago. Change is always hard for her."

Garnet was inscrutable, but she always was in the days after the shattering of Pink Diamond. "Her willingness to follow your example may not be strong enough to counter years of following the Diamonds."

"It's something I've thought about, but… it's not so much the Diamonds she's loyal to, it's to gemkind and order. Every time I've heard her rant about you all, it's in the context of the selfishness of single gems against the greater good and how things are supposed to be. The Diamonds never really enter into it except as enforcers of order. If that makes sense?" Mist sighed and folded her hands across her midriff. She wished this could be easier, but nothing about her and Peridot was easy or simple.

"You'll convince her. Eventually." Garnet smiled reassuringly, and Mist really did wish she could stay with the Crystal Gems more often. She'd never had a friend before. "Just be as open and honest as you can be. And get her out of the Prime Kindergarten when the last batch starts emerging."

Far be it for Mist to start questioning future vision now. She thanked Garnet and returned to her mistress' side.

Things started picking up soon after that. She had always known that Morganite's head pearl resented her mistress, so it came as no surprise that Morganite's ship exploded in the atmosphere during the raid on Prime Kindergarten. The Renegade reassured her afterwards that two of the three pearls had survived, and the one that hadn't was the one who had been with Morganite the longest and chose to destroy the ship when the other two pearls were safe. Her greater concern was in broaching the subject of joining the rebellion to Peridot. What she hadn't been prepared for was Peridot's panic; she knew that it would have been a difficult subject either way, but somehow she never thought that she was asking Peridot to reconcile her willingness to let Mist do what she wanted with her own worldview.

It seemed that Peridot turned a blind eye to Mist's transgressions and absences because she was afraid of losing her. Peridot was more afraid of allowing herself to step out of her own role because it was all she had ever known. Mist had wanted to ease Peridot through this, but she didn't know how. In the end, she stayed by Peridot's side as silent encouragement and a reminder that whatever Peridot chose, she would support her even if she didn't understand. She knew Peridot cared about her; none of her previous owners had looked at her so fondly, none of them had treated her with the kindness that Peridot had, and certainly none of them would have thought to free her even when she knew the decision wasn't in Peridot's best interest. But how much did love weigh against centuries of the Diamonds' carefully-crafted indoctrination?

Peridot stopped speaking much after that. She spoke if she had to, but she was focusing so much on her work that Mist was sure she was ignoring her problems again. Mist voiced one of her theories—that they could create an artificial beta-quartz in sandstone with enough pressure and heat on initial injection to make up for the fact that sandstone wasn't rhyolite—and Peridot helped her bring her ideas to life. The beta-quartz would then stabilize into a jasper pseudomorph, and ideally the phase inversion would make the jasper the strongest quartz Homeworld would ever see. And she would be made by a pearl, and wouldn't that be something? And Peridot was so proud of her, even if the experiment did result in rendering the injector unusable. Then Peridot had made her a little armlet of gold wire, with impossibly fine little sculpted flowers along the band that looked like their petals would sway in the slightest breeze, and Mist was sure that she had been chosen over Homeworld.

When the command to retreat came from on high, Mist knew she had to stay and join the Crystal Gems in deed as well as intent. She knew also that the rumors that the Diamonds had a secret weapon had been growing stronger among Peridot's contacts, and she couldn't wait for a decision anymore. It felt like her core was fracturing when she had to say goodbye to the first gem who had ever been kind to her, the first gem she loved, but she couldn't let Peridot stay on Earth during the final battle. Maybe Peridot would return later, maybe Mist could find her way offworld and surprise Peridot in the quarters they shared on Homeworld. But first, she dissipated Peridot's form and gave the disembodied gem one last kiss before setting her on the cushion of the pilot's chair in Peridot's shuttle and programming the autopilot to send her back to Homeworld. She watched the shuttle fade into a blurry smudge and disappear in the sky with all the other ships pulling out; the tears just wouldn't stop coming.

There was a flash of white-yellow-blue light that she couldn't look away from, and a dreadful song that felt like it was resonating inside her gem and cracking her open and warping her. She jammed her palms against her ears to muffle the sound, but it didn't work. It was like the sound and the light worked in tandem to seek out and magnify every flaw she had. Oh, she was such a failure. Surely Peridot wouldn't come back for her now. She would never be able to be a real gem, and she was just playing pretend, and it was no wonder Peridot didn't love her as much as she loved order, and… and who was she kidding by playing rebel, and what kind of promise was "I'll look after the Kindergarten gems" anyway, and, and, and…

She looked down. Her hands were clawed wings ( _were they always? she couldn't remember_ ), and her toes ended in claws and scratched at the ground ( _didn't she have… what were they? foot coverings?_ ), and her tail swept along the red dirt of the Kindergarten's floor the way her… _skirt? what was that?_ … once did. There was a band of metal around her left upper arm and it was important but she couldn't remember why. The sun was coming and she needed shelter. She scuttled along until she found a little alcove. Someone had made it for her. Who? She couldn't recall. She curled up in the darkness behind a sandstone sculpture, where the sound of sandfalls lulled her to sleep.

* * *

Notes: Mist's corrupted form is essentially a cross between archaeopteryx and a secretary bird.  
e1!Peridot's inner conflict is left unresolved for good reason.  
Dumuzid was a mythical ruler of Sumer before the great flood; the Sumerian Kings List states that he ruled for 36,000 years. Obviously wasn't going to happen here, but given that he was associated with Inanna (whom Rose Quartz is heavily influenced by), I thought it'd be nice to make a little nod to real world mythology.


	6. Metamorphosis

NB: This was going to be a side-story, but it fit better with the main story since I'd already gone over what happened to Mist. Also, there are mentions of things that weren't in the initial draft of this story and additions of lore from the latest Stevenbomb. They've been added to the prior chapters and the side-stories. If you're so inclined, please reread. Thanks!

* * *

Peridot's quarters in an apartment building in one of the older populated sectors of Homeworld felt abysmally empty and larger than necessary when she returned. Alone. There was the work bench where her finest tools laid unused for over five hundred years. In one corner was a storage bin where she arranged her vast repository of data crystals; some of them would surely be banned by now and most of them even predated her emergence. There was a viewscreen and terminal she rarely used for actual work, as much of her work was done on her tablet. Set before that was a couch in the old style that favored gentled edges and rounded corners rather than the angles that were popular now. Past that was her rest chamber, also built in the old style that acknowledged that gems might take intimate interest in each other and accommodated for that with a horizontal rest pad against the far wall. A corner was dedicated to the small fountain of calcium- and aragonite-rich water that she had obtained to ensure that her pearl had the best care possible, and there were still a few soft cloths hanging from pegs near it. She had never thought of owning a pearl before then and followed care recommendations the best she could.

The ache returned as she slumped on the rest pad and stared at the opposite wall. It hadn't been so bad when she was pretending to be her old self in front of other gems, but it came up whenever she was truly alone. When she was in a place where it was safe to deflate and let her face fall back into misery. Would it ever stop hurting? This place was too… sterile, empty without Mist nearby. Being alone meant that nothing could stop her thoughts from circling inside her.

That Mist had damaged her form just enough to make her retreat into her gem was a non-issue. Were their situations switched, she likely would have… No, she wouldn't have done the same. She was ultimately selfish and would have taken Mist with her because she thought she knew better. But joining the rebels had been Mist's decision and she had respected that. Had to continue respecting that, because to do otherwise would be to deny Mist's autonomy. Which reminded her of a promise she made.

The trip to the oldest gem colony was long; less so due to travel distance and mostly due to hopping from one galaxy warp to another instead. Then there were the issues that came of calibrating a warp to a long-dead star, which resulted in the warp stream taking a few tries to connect. The milky quartz who guarded the incoming warp waved her along with a grin of relief from boredom; the colony got so few visitors. Those that did know of it weren't likely to be on legitimate business. The colony had taken damage from the sun's final circumstellar envelope expansion before it became a white dwarf and had been decaying ever since, and a sector would collapse ever so often from neglect. She made her way to the main registry spire, where a decrepit moonstone a million years old or so entered records for those who wanted to slip something past the usual watchers.

"What will it cost to free a pearl?" Peridot hissed at the gem. The moonstone was semi-corporeal and seemed almost fuzzy around the edges; as the millennia wore away the surface of her gem, so she had increasing difficulty maintaining a solid form. Or perhaps she no longer remembered what she once looked like, for the only thing distinct about her was her gem.

The moonstone's rough approximation of eyes squinted at her suspiciously. Her voice was a breathy little thing that rattled and slurred when she forgot how to pronounce more complicated sounds, and Peridot had to listen closely to make out her words. "No one has released a pearl in over five hundred millennia. Are you sure you want to go through with it?"

Five hundred thousand years. It was an absurd figure for such a small bit of filing. Peridot thought of her lover, with those bright green eyes and the cleverness it took to hypothesize new methods of gem creation that no peridot would have ever considered. She thought of Morganite's head pearl, who looked with hatred at her mistress when she thought no one was watching. She thought of Blue Diamond's pearl, a soft-spoken presence in court who acted so seldomly that she might have been a statue; it was so likely that she was bored and daydreaming that Peridot wondered whether anyone noticed. She thought of Yellow Diamond's pearl, who delighted in the failure of others because it meant that Yellow Diamond's attention wasn't on her. They were all fully-realized gems, and the thought that no one considered freeing pearls in five hundred thousand years was appalling. "Great Maker," she muttered helplessly, finally realizing the scale of such injustice.

"Do not use Her title in vain," Moonstone hissed.

"No offence meant." Peridot responded quickly. Her hand moved automatically in a gesture she hadn't done consciously in seventy thousand years, a quick tracing of the basic outline of the Maker's Mark that existed in the molecular structures of all gems. Even now, she was only really aware of the tail end of the ovoid sign.

The moonstone's eyes seemed to soften at the sight, and her hand mimicked the gesture. "You believe?"

"The Maker's Mark is integrated in the creation of all gems, including pearls." It was not an admission she would be comfortable with sharing with someone who was not a fellow Kindergartener, but she doubted the moonstone would share such things with anyone. What followed was a gamble, but it was one she had to take. Anything to help her case. "How can I not?"

The moonstone leaned back from her console, her nearly-featureless face inscrutable but her posture receptive. "Then I will help you. Your price is a story. Tell me why you want to free your pearl."

This she could do. Peridot had spent so much of her time on Earth thinking about her former pearl and what the presence of Mist's personality and critical thinking skills meant in the context of gem social stratification. "The Maker's Mark is present in all gems. Kindergarteners believe that this collection of molecules and their subatomic networks are what gives us sapience and the ability to mimic organic forms and their sensations. This Mark is also present in the development of pearls. I have spent considerable time in the presence of a pearl and watched as she learned from me and developed her own theories and capacity for autonomy. She was able to not only develop the full knowledge and skillset of a journeygem-grade Kindergartener, but she took the initiative to develop and test a hypothesis that no peridot has ever considered. Earth was abandoned before that test reached fruition, but she would earn an expert's grade once that test gem emerges."

"Tell me about this hypothesis." There was a hint of doubt in the moonstone's voice, but she looked to still be receptive.

"Beta-quartzes are unstable, high-temperature quartz polymorphs that usually stabilize into pyramidal pseudomorphs of the nearest related gem. They primarily occur naturally in volcanic rock, such as rhyolite." Peridot's voice might have carried a hint of pride, but she really didn't mind. "Mist—the pearl—hypothesized that with enough heat and pressure upon injection, she could get a beta-quartz to grow in sandstone. She modified an injector on her own, with only minor labor assistance from me, to perform this task. We expect the beta-quartz to stabilize into a jasper pseudomorph upon emergence, based on the sandstone matrix and the injection materials available. By undertaking this experiment, she hoped to create the strongest jasper that Homeworld has ever seen."

"Why?"

"Because she wanted to," Peridot responded. "Because the successful creation of a gem is a test all Kindergarteners must pass before they can achieve their expert's grade, and the only thing that prevents her from being a real Kindergartener is the circumstance of her creation."

The moonstone said nothing for a long while, and her blank mask of a face was impassive. "Pearls do not have the molecular cohesion or framework for gem intellectual development."

"Neither do obsidians, and their inability to develop complex crystalline atomic structures allows them to think creatively enough to develop murals and other aesthetic works. Why are they allowed autonomy, but not pearls?"

Silence followed, and Peridot wasn't sure whether the moonstone was thinking on her words or not. Then she rasped; "You may be projecting your desires onto your pearl."

"There was no projection." Peridot almost wanted to laugh, for her interest in Mist along such lines didn't even begin until Mist started acting as her own gem. And, well, Mist was good at making what she wanted very clear. "In the seventy-two thousand years before she was gifted to me, I had no desire or need for a pearl. In light of the fact that it is utter cruelty to keep another sapient gem in slavery, I cannot in good conscience retain ownership of her."

"Very well." The moonstone shifted in a way that hurt to look at, that would appear to be wildly disjointed and reminiscent of gem damage, and she brought up a screen. "Your identification?"

"Peridot Facet-1F Cut-2AA. Made on Blue Diamond's first colony."

The semi-corporeal form shifted in colors and jittered in shape as the moonstone worked on the file. Peridot kept her urge to cringe as suppressed as she could, and only long experience with the Diamond courts kept her from breaking face. Finally, Moonstone settled back into her pale wisp of a form. "It is done. According to the record, she was freed after her third owner threw her away. She was never yours."

 _It's better this way,_ Peridot told herself. Still, there was one more ache to join the rest of the regrets she took from Earth with her.

Peridot returned to Homeworld, her conscience relieved and her core still feeling hollowed-out. Time passed, filled at some times with work and other times with staring at the sterile walls of her quarters and wondering what any of it really meant. There was time yet for a million indecisions, visions, revisions, and none of it meant anything without Mist. Without proper closure, or knowing if Mist was safe. She had to go back and the Cluster project was her only available option. It didn't matter how grotesque she found it, or how ridiculous in its awfulness its scale was, because it was what would allow her to go back. And it would have been worth it, after all, if she could just _know_.

In time, she asked several higher-ranking gems to be allowed to return to Earth well before the planned Cluster drilling date and was met with resistance and suspicion despite the fact that she had argued that she needed to examine the proposed injection sites. She did not ask again for a hundred years.

As she waited, she reviewed the plans for the Cluster and began work on the things that would serve her best during the upcoming project. Shard collector drones, customized injectors and drills, weapons to even her odds against surviving gems and wildlife alike, containment fields, other things the prehnites wouldn't think to invent. When it came time to program the shard collector drones, she agonized for too long before finally planting a few lines of code to alert her if they came across anything (a whole gem, shards, dust…) with Mist's chemical signature. They would have to do her searching for her.

The work she buried herself into kept her from thinking too deeply most of the time, but sometimes she laid on her side to stare at the parallel wall to her rest pad, replaying all her memories of Mist out of the fear that letting memory of her slip away would make Peridot forget her entirely. The Diamonds may have her beyond her quarters, but this place was sacrosanct. Nothing mattered but the comfortable companionship she had with her pearl. Sometimes, if she closed her eyes, she thought she might picture Mist sitting on that couch watching Diamond-approved entertainment on the viewscreen and waiting for her.

One hundred years. Two. Three. Four. Five. A millennium passed, and the ache never went away.

Mist had always liked her little dexterity exercises, though Peridot was never quite sure why. It took perhaps too long for the idea to come to her, but in the end she started scavenging scrap copper to work on the mural. Something to keep the memory alive. The plates she welded together first, then smoothed out the seams and cut and polished the entire thing until it took up the full length of the part of the wall she kept staring at, from floor to ceiling. The work changed, refocused to this, as she hammered and shaped and torched and smoothed and polished until the most life-like portrait of Mist emerged from the plate. She shaped and welded on leaves and flowers in the background and around the alcove she built for it until the portrait felt more natural. Oxidation helped the colors settle into a green that didn't quite match, but worked until she could find the right kind of paints and enamels.

"Stars, I've missed you," she whispered at last, when the work was done and she sat before the copper portrait. It never responded, but she never expected it to. It wasn't enough, but it took off a little of the edge of her loneliness. "Wish you were here."

Peridot told herself that it was not madness to grieve like this. That any gem who had loved so deeply would feel the same. Her fingers brushed against the portrait's smooth copper cheeks as she confided in it just what she thought of Yellow Diamond's absurd project or Blue Diamond's retreat from court responsibilities. Her hand settled over the copper hands folded in front of a narrow pelvis as she shared her plans of planting charges on the Cluster just in case the search took longer than the abomination's incubation time, or her ideas for settling down with Mist in the older colonies where no one cared what went on so long as they kept their heads down and refrained from drawing attention to the colony. Once or twice (more, if she was honest with herself), she sank to her knees before the portrait and sobbed.

Two millennia passed since the beginning of Era Two and she was finally allowed to return to Earth. With citrine escort and Kyanite to keep an eye on her, of course. They took a stealth ship and kept their activities confined to the night just in case any gem survived the final assault, and she sent out her drones to gather shards. She modified the underground control room at the Prime Kindergarten for the misbegotten fusion experiments, reprogrammed the computer to reflect the change in ownership from Pink Diamond to Yellow Diamond, and uploaded the plans. When Kyanite decided that she was done with the initial stage of the project, she had the drones recalled. None of them gave her the pattern that would tell her if they'd found Mist, and she was fortunate that Kyanite was otherwise occupied when her shoulders slumped in defeat. But perhaps they didn't have enough time. She was allowed to come back several months later for the second phase, which involved drilling into what would have been the original Beta Kindergarten, a two billion year old metamorphic massif carved by glaciation to the northeast of the Prime Kindergarten. The shards ( _Great Maker, there were so many_ ) were bundled up and dumped into a chamber she had to carve into the zone between the lithosphere and asthenosphere, and that work had taken a hundred years to complete. When it was done, the search drones had nothing for her that she cared about. Again. And again she was taken from Earth before she was ready.

Four millennia passed since the beginning of Era Two. Nearly five by now, and the fusion experiments had to be examined. The ache was an old, familiar companion by then. The crying finally stopped a millennium back, when she finally gave up on ever seeing Mist again, and she settled into a dull bitterness that few were willing to comment on. She told herself that it was not madness to grieve like this, but when newly-emerged peridots cringed before her more and more as the years passed, a small part of her wondered if she wasn't going too far. But it wasn't her fault, was it? There were standards that apprentice Kindergarteners had to live up to, and none of the arrogant little pebbles could measure up to a willing pearl. So she lashed out, berated them for not listening and stepping out of line, and only the most resolute survived her. She would have been perfectly content with never taking another apprentice, but Kyanite insisted that she had to have one for the Cluster project. The volunteers were few and far between, possibly because her reputation had transformed from "fair but challenging" to "demanding and tyrannical" over the millennia. A younger peridot, one of Yellow Diamond's, went over the virtues of the volunteers with her.

"I would rather work with a pearl," she groused as she looked over the volunteer files. The other peridot smiled nervously at her. "They don't complain about hard work."

The other peridot looked like she wanted to say something, but she closed her mouth and wrung her hands as Peridot found fault with every little thing. Yet, she kept coming back to this prodigy made on Homeworld. She was only a couple of thousands of years old, but she had passed her Kindergarten ranking tests and gotten her certification under an Era One Kindergartener whom Peridot was familiar enough with to respect. Additionally, the fact that she'd developed her own robonoids without assistance worked well in her favor. "This one. Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG. She looks less disappointing than the rest. I'll take her."

"I'll let her know." The other peridot's tone was almost tremulous, timorous for the young prodigy. Peridot said nothing, though she might have felt a twinge of guilt for the reaction and promptly smothered it before she could really process it. There was no room in her life for that kind of thing. Not anymore. She left, instead, and returned to her quiet, empty quarters.

Back to misery and grief and low-burning bitterness. There was nothing else for her.

* * *

Note: The next few parts are going to feature Jasper and the Beta gems. Era 1!Peridot will be back once they catch up to present day.


End file.
